Perfect World: Reviews

“Perfect World is unflinching in its presentation of a mind slowly unraveling. Perceptively charting one man’s lonely struggle against an inexorable foe, Ian Colford captures the stark complexities of mental illness like few others. At times brutal yet always deeply compassionate, Perfect World is a wonder.” — Corey Redekop

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“Perfect World is a corruscating examination of a mind riven by illness and the traumatic ripple effects that can have on one man and those closest to him. The book's power resides precisely in its brevity, which provides a focus and an immediacy that is striking and emotionally devastating. Colford treats his subject directly and without sentimentality, which only adds to the overall effect. The novella is admittedly bleak and distressing, though not completely devoid of what Leonard Cohen referred to as the cracks where the light gets in. Tom's experience is harrowing and painful, but ends on a note of contingency and, if one chooses to look at it this way, hope.” — Quill and Quire

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"Ian Colford’s vision is deliberate and focussed, Tom’s unravelling all the more compelling against the backdrop of exacting and meticulous construction." — Buried In Print

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"The power of this novel ... is the measured tone of the storytelling, without ornament or sentimentality." — Sarah Murdoch, in the Toronto Star

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"Perfect World isn’t a manifesto against stigma, and it isn’t really a plea for help. Rather, it’s a carefully written, sometimes painful tour through one man’s trauma and resilience, his greatest falls and ultimately, his acceptance of a difficult reality. And it is wholly worthy of applause." — Jonathan Valelly, in The Winnipeg Review

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"Again, though, it is the author's voice that is the dominant one here, and it is Colford's compassion and his ability to identify with his mentally ill protagonist that carries the reader into a similar comprehension of the man's dilemma." — Robin McGrath, in Atlantic Books Today

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"There isn’t a moral of the story, or a lesson learned at the end. This tightly written novel is fiction at its most simple and pure; a look into someone else’s life, and the opportunity to walk in someone else’s shoes." — Anne Logan, in I've Read This

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"This is an unassuming work of significant artistic and, dare I say, philosophic merit." — David Hickey, in The Antigonish Review, no. 189 (Spring 2017)